The latest issue of Rejuvenation Research is up, and it's weighty, bulked out by papers from the Edmonton Aging Symposium held in March. The results presented by LysoSENS researchers funded by the Methuselah Foundation are worth pointing out again:

Engineering Away Lysosomal Junk: Medical Bioremediation:

Atherosclerosis, macular degeneration, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, are associated with the intracellular accumulation of substances that impair cellular function and viability. Reversing this accumulation may be a valuable therapy, but the accumulating substances resist normal cellular catabolism. On the other hand, these substances are naturally degraded in the soil and water by microorganisms. Thus, we propose the concept of “medical bioremediation,” which derives from the successful field of in situ environmental bioremediation of petroleum hydrocarbons. In environmental bioremediation, communities of microorganisms mineralize hydrophobic organics using a series of enzymes. In medical bioremediation, we hope to utilize one or several microbial enzymes to degrade the intracellular accumulators enough that they can be cleared from the affected cells. Here, we present preliminary, but promising results for the bacterial biodegradation of 7-ketocholesterol, the main accumulator of foam cells associated with atherosclerosis. In particular, we report on the isolation of several Nocardia strains able to biodegrade 7-ketocholesterol and as an ester of 7-ketocholoesterol. We also outline key intermediates in the biodegradation pathway, a key step towards identifying the key enzymes that may lead to a therapy.

Medical bioremediation has a great future ahead of it - it's clearly one of those ideas, so obvious in hindsight, whose time has come. You should expect to see companies founded on applications of this technology base a decade from now, just as they are founded today on the application of calorie restriction science.

As an aside, and since we're on the topic of the Edmonton Aging Symposium, you should take a look at the video archive at the Symposium website - it's a great collection of presentations that touches on some of the most promising modern science relevant to aging, longevity, repair and rejuvenation.

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